HP's webOS Running on All PCs by 2012: Report

The ability for all HP laptops and desktops to run webOS, in addition to Microsoft's Office, is one change that new CEO Leo Apotheker has planned for the PC giant.

Every PC
shipped by Hewlett-Packard, beginning in 2012, will include the ability to run
webOS, the mobile operating system HP acquired last year in its $1.2 billion
acquisition of Palm. However, HP is not abandoning Microsoft just yet. The
company still plans to offer Microsoft's Windows operating system as well as
productivity tools such as Office.
This is just
one of the changes being put into place by the PC maker's new CEO, Leo
Apotheker, according to a March 9 report in Bloomberg Business
Week.

Under former
HP CEO Mark Hurd-who resigned in August 2010 after being found in
violation of HP's Standards of Business Conduct, following an allegedly
inappropriate relationship with an HP contractor-cost-cutting was a priority,
more than research and development or software growth. By including webOS on
its PCs, Apotheker hopes to "create a massive platform," he told
Bloomberg, and so attract application developers to the OS-a necessity, if HP
is going to effectively compete against the Apple iPhone and Android-running
handsets in the smartphone market HP entered with its purchase of Palm.

While the
Apple App Store currently features more than 350,000 applications, and Google's
Android Market has swelled to 250,000, webOS's application offerings number
approximately 6,000.
Other planned
changes include a renewed emphasis on product quality-which not only keeps
customers happy but lowers service and warranty costs for a company, Apotheker
told Bloomberg-as well as creating new channels of communication between
product groups and growing HP's software holdings.
On Feb. 14, HP
acquired Veritica, and Apotheker said he's looking for additional software
companies that can help HP improve device security and enable customers to
analyze large amounts of data. SAP, the software maker that Apotheker was CEO
of until Feb. 2010, is not a consideration, he added, and neither is
Salesforce.com.
Additionally,
Apotheker also plans to treat HP's employees as more of a company resource, and
to treat India, where HP has thousands of staff, as a proper market, versus
just a source of low-cost labor.
"HP has
lost its soul," Apotheker told Bloomberg. "The first thing I wanted
to do when I joined HP was listen to the people. The rank and file usually know
about all the shortcomings."
Apotheker and
his team have their work cut out for them, competing in a PC market that's been
posting modest sales, a smartphone market jammed with competitors and, soon, a
tablet market in which just about every major phone and PC manufacturer is or
plans to compete. In February, HP finally introduced its TouchPad, a 9.7-inch
tablet that weights 1.5 pounds, features a 1.2GHz Snapdragon processor and will
run the webOS operating system.
More than just
compete, HP hopes to become a market leader. "I hope one day people will
say 'this is as cool as HP,' not 'as cool as
Apple,'" Apotheker told the BBC in an interview earlier this year.
Cool is
something Apotheker is also taking a new approach to. His business style
reportedly earned him the nickname "the Polar Bear" among French SAP
colleagues ("solitary, approachable-looking, but deadly, if crossed,"
wrote Bloomberg). Recently, however, he purchased a home in California, miles
from HP's Silicon Valley headquarters. Still maintaining a home in Paris,
Apotheker says he plans to treat HP like the global company it is and not be
confined to his office.
"I
consider myself a Californian now," he told Bloomberg. "I can even
say 'awesome,' and 'cool.'"

Michelle Maisto has been covering the enterprise mobility space for a decade, beginning with Knowledge Management, Field Force Automation and eCRM, and most recently as the editor-in-chief of Mobile Enterprise magazine. She earned an MFA in nonfiction writing from Columbia University, and in her spare time obsesses about food. Her first book, The Gastronomy of Marriage, if forthcoming from Random House in September 2009.